“I guess it’s because I’m just naturally odd,” she says bashfully when asked how she came to choose such odd professions. “I went to keeping books in a meat shop, and one day when the butcher was taken sick I offered to take his place. Then I bought a shop of my own in Granby, Mo. With the help of a man I employed I did all my own butchering, cutting up the beef, and rendering the lard. I knocked the animals in the head as they came down the runway. Oh, yes, I hated it at first, but I soon got used to it. Some way I hated worst to kill the hogs.
“Cattle are interesting,” she continued musingly; “much more interesting than clothes. I’m going back into the cattle business.”
The restrictions of corsets, high heels, and frills are unknown to this wholesome mountain girl. She dresses very plainly in a short, dark skirt, mannish waist and tie, and knockabout hat. She has mild blue eyes, curling dark hair, and talks with a little lisp.
Edison Will Make Benzol.
Another step for the manufacture of benzol in this country has been taken. Thomas A. Edison has opened a factory in Johnstown, Pa., for the manufacture of benzol from coal gas, a process never before developed in this country.
Carbolic acid and aniline dyes are made from benzol, which heretofore has come chiefly from Germany. Since the war there has been a great shortage of this product, and chemists and manufacturers have given much attention to producing it in this country. Recently Secretary of the Interior Lane announced that Doctor Rittman, one of the department’s chemists, had discovered a method of producing benzol from petroleum, and this week he announced that he had made arrangements with a manufacturing firm to use the Rittman method.
Rancher Battles with Trapped White Wolf.
John S. Sherrod, the rancher near Glenwood Springs, Col., who caught a huge white wolf in his traps near Fruita, was in Glenwood Springs and admitted having experienced a very thrilling time in connection with the wolf, and the near loss of his life in the Grand River.
The wolf was caught on the south side of the Grand River, and Sherrod had to cross in a boat. When landing on the north bank, the wolf sprang at the trapper, who grappled with the beast in order to save his life. The strain on the chain attached to the trap was too much with the two pulling on it, and it gave way, allowing the wolf and his captor to drop into the river, which is quite swift at this point.
Sherrod was almost drowned in his efforts to keep the wolf’s head under water, but he finally succeeded in besting the animal, which he pulled out on the bank and killed with a club.